Chile, maternal mortality and the legal status of abortion

I wrote this column in the Post today. Feel free to get in on the comments if you feel so inclined. The gist of it:

The truth is that it is better health care, not abortion, that substantially improves maternal mortality rates — access to skilled birth attendants and access to maternal health-care services. Higher education levels for women also serve to decrease maternal mortality. In light of these findings, abortion rights activists should stop making sweeping predictions that restricting abortion will result in skyrocketing maternal deaths and stop insisting that abortion is the key to improving women’s health. The data simply don’t back up such claims.

Comments

It seems that maybe banning abortion has forced doctors to REALLY put healthcare for women first. If you’re not allowed to take the easy way out and abort a child, then you’re going to have to work harder to treat women better.